Friends, This is proposed final draft of my chapter which before was called "Amerikas role in world politics 1914-2003". Many thanks to all of you who sent in feedback. Many changes have been made as a result. Comments welcome on this version... still a bit of time before publication. all the best, rkm ___________________________________________________ The Story of America How to Conquer the World Without Really Trying (c) 2003 Richard K. Moore 1650-1776: Colonial prosperity and the movement for independence ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The British colonies in America were largely self-governing. There were Governors appointed by the King, but the day-to-day business of running the colonies was carried out by local representative assemblies. Under this regime the colonies prospered. Boston became the empire's third largest trading port, and the colonies competed effectively with Britain in shipbuilding, ocean transport, iron production, fishing, distilling, woolens, and much else. Indeed it was the success of the colonies that initially led to problems with Britain. British merchants demanded that Parliament protect them from colonial competition, leading to the Woolens Act (1699), the Hat Act (1732), Molasses Act (1733), and the Iron Act (1750). These measures aimed to restrict production and trade by the colonies, and they were to a large extent ignored by the Americans. More serious conflict developed when the Crown attempted to impose taxes to recoup Britain for its protection of the colonies in the French and Indian War (1754-63). At the end of this war Britain had a national debt of 75,000,00 Pounds, and the Sugar Act (1756) and the Stamp Act (1765) were imposed on the colonies. In addition the Crown became more insistent on enforcing the earlier trade restrictions. A movement for independence arose which was led primarily by the more affluent elements of American society. The movement was strongest around the main trading ports. For the wealthy landowners and commercial elite in the colonies, the advantages of independence were clear. With full freedom of trade and development, and an end to Royal levies, there were immense profits to be made. Dissent and rebellion were encouraged among the populace, and British rule was becoming increasingly oppressive. But as late as 1775 most colonists were interested not in independence but in redress of their grievances as British subjects. What may have turned the tide of popular opinion toward independence was the publication by Tom Paine of Common Sense in January 1776. It sold more copies than any previous book in history and was read out loud on street corners to attentive crowds not only in the colonies but also in Ireland and France and wherever else republican ideas had taken root. Paine managed to persuasively and plainly convey the Enlightenment notion that Kings were not a God-given necessity, that people actually could rule themselves, and that they had a natural right to do so. Today we take those ideas as obvious, but at the time it was a paradigm shift of consciousness that even oppressive Royal troops and a Boston Massacre could not bring about by themselves. Most people had been ruled by kings and potentates, usually claiming divine authority, ever since civilization began. It was not easy to embrace the notion that a society could operate without them. Thus the population began to turn toward independence, but they did so largely in the belief that they were going to find relief from oppressive rule generally. They were empowered by the idea of popular sovereignty and they wanted real democracy. They meant to overthrow not only Royal rule, but oppression by local elites as well. Those local elites, however, were happy to take up the rhetoric of democracy--and they now had a constituency willing to undertake the struggle for independence. The resistance organized rapidly under their leadership and in September 1776, only nine months after the publication of Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence was signed--a document espousing radical democratic ideals, and the right of the people to replace their government at any time they deem it necessary. 1776-1789: The Revolution betrayed ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Certainly there were democratic idealists among the elite leadership as well. Their flowery words were not all hypocritical propaganda. Nonetheless their allegiance to democracy was tempered by their concern for their own self-interest, and their notion of how society should operate. They didn't want Royal interference in their affairs, but neither did they want interference by what many of them referred to as "mob rule". The revolutionary struggle went on for eight years at great sacrifice by the population and the soldiers. In the immediate aftermath of the war the sense of democratic empowerment was running high. Many of the conservative elite went back to Britain or migrated to Canada. Thirteen sovereign States were formed, under the Articles of Confederation. Many of the legislatures were controlled by radical agrarians; the connection between government and people was relatively strong. The Articles turned out to be inadequate to the needs of the new nation. Piracy was rife, with no proper navy to deter it, and disputes between the States were sometimes difficult to settle. A revised framework was needed that would better enable effective cooperation among the States. The legislatures agreed to sponsor a Constitutional Convention, empowered to amend the Articles and bring them back for unanimous approval of the States. The delegates were supposed to represent their States, and the Constitution was to be an agreement among the States, an amended version of the Articles. Such was the charter under which the Convention was empowered to operate. The legislatures, unfortunately, mostly appointed their delegates from among their local wealthy elites. The delegates then ensconced themselves in secret session and proceeded to betray the charter under which they had been assembled. They discarded the Articles, and began debating and drafting a wholly new document, one that transferred sovereignty to a relatively strong central government. The delegates reneged on the States that had sent them, and took it upon themselves to speak directly for We The People--and thus begins the preamble to their Constitution. In effect they accomplished a coup d'etat. Most of them were lawyers, and they managed to design a system that would enable existing elites to continue to run the affairs of the new nation, as they had before under the Crown--under a Constitution that for all the world seems to embody sound democratic principles. What it comes down to is the fact that laws effect what happens in society, but what happens is in society is seldom exactly the letter of the law. Lawyers understand this subtle relationship between what's writ and what's practiced. They deal with it every day as they draft contracts, prosecute lawsuits, or handle criminal cases. They have a sense for how things will really operate, how the legal language will be interpreted in practice--what will be enforced and what will go on behind the scenes. Not only that, the delegates knew also what kind of people would be doing the interpreting and the conniving, that being in many cases themselves when the new Federal Government later convened. By the very way they carried out the secret Constitutional Convention they demonstrated how the new government was going to operate. They were delegates, chartered to represent their constituencies, and they were mostly from wealthy elite circles. When gathered in their own company they represented instead their own mutual interests--yet they presented their work as the embodiment of their charter. And they succeeded politically in selling their product to the people and to the States. Such has been the story of American politics ever since, and the power of the Federal Government has grown stronger generation by generation, leading ultimately to the effective repudiation of the Bill of Rights and other constitutional guarantees under the cover of the now current "War on Terrorism". 1790-1898: The Continental Empire ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ One way to characterize the structure of the new United States is to note that it was set up as an efficiently run empire. Each State, particularly in the early days, ran its own affairs--just as they had under the Crown. But ultimate sovereignty, especially as regards foreign affairs, the currency, the military, and war and peace, was wrested firmly in Washington--as before it was wrested with the Crown. From this perspective the Federal Government simply replaced the role of the Crown in the administration of what had been the American portion of the British Empire. I suggest that this characterization of the U.S. system as an empire-from-the-beginning is a useful one. From this perspective one can see a continuous thread in the dynamics of US/Federal/Elite actions, connecting what are often seen as distinct phases of US history--early nation building and later imperial expansion. What we've had from the beginning, from this perspective, is an empire controlled by an elite establishment whose operations are centered along the Eastern Seaboard. There lie the crossroads of commerce and the halls of government; there is and always has been the nerve center of the American Empire. There has always been a well-trodden path between Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. From a base of thirteen original States, the empire expanded, primarily by means of displacing the native population and adding more States to the empire. The empire expanded by other means as well. America purchased the French territories from Napoleon (1803) and picked up Texas and the southwestern States by provoking a war with Mexico (1846). Those most able to invest in the development of the new imperial realms were those who already had the most money--the wealthy elite who were already running the rest of the empire. Thus as the empire expanded, control continued to remain concentrated largely in the same elite community, based primarily but not exclusively on the East Coast. An internal conflict in the empire developed as the interests of the plantation-based South come increasingly into conflict with the interests of the industry-based North. The plantation system was basically a feudal economy with a trade overlay, and it offered relatively few investment opportunities for the Eastern Establishment. The South was, relatively speaking, outside the capitalist economy, which dominated the rest of the empire. While the North wanted protectionism to shelter its budding industries, the South wanted free trade to maximize its cotton exports. The Eastern Establishment put the South under increasing pressure as it maneuvered Federal policies towards its own interests at the expense of the South. Ultimately the Southern States banded together (1861) and asserted their right to secede from the Union and pursue their own destiny as a separate nation. With the Southern representatives absent, control of the Federal Government passed fully into the hands of its traditional elite, whose interests were centered on industrialization and capitalist development. The declaration of secession provided the Eastern Establishment with an opportunity to do away with the plantation system once and for all, and bring the South more fully into the capitalist economy. The South would then be open for investment and development, and the empire could focus its trade and tariff policies on the needs of industrial development. The cession was rejected by Washington and the ensuing Civil War left the South gratuitously devastated, much as Iraq today has been so devastated in our own time. Then as now Establishment investors and corporations rushed in to exploit the available opportunities to buy up resources and to develop and rebuild the impoverished and devastated territory--for their own economic enrichment. In this way the American Empire grew to its full continental size, with minimal conflict or involvement with the world's other imperial powers. While they continued to struggle and compete for colonial territories, the U.S. was the only shark in its pool, and immense and rich pool it was. Not only did the U.S. have uncontested control of its official territory, but by means of the Monroe Doctrine--a unilateral declaration with no basis in international law--it managed to minimize European interference with American imperial ventures South of its borders. Historians say that the U.S. emerged as an imperial power in 1898, with the Spanish American War, but I suggest that any account of imperialism in the 1800s should feature the American Continental Empire as the prime and most significant example. Particularly as it has stood the test of time. The strategic use of leverage ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The American imperial system is now and has always been characterized by a skillful and creative application of leverage. To begin with, the Federal Government leaves it to the States to manage their own detailed internal affairs. Federal control over the empire comes through its control of the critical levers of power--the currency, the military, the power of making war and peace. As the empire expanded, new territories were added with equal exploitation of leverage. Rather than confronting the native population once and for all in a military conflict, tribes were pushed back a little at a time by means of false promises and treaties, threats, bribes, and by force when necessary. Their large-scale extinction was incremental and accomplished more by trickery than by expensive military conflict. The Monroe Doctrine, the timely acquisition from France, the easily won war with Mexico--these are all examples of high leverage enterprises: maximum gain with minimal effort. As our story continues, astute use of leverage will continue to play a prominent role. 1898-1918: Establishment of a foothold in the global imperial game ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ With Spain seriously weakened, the American Establishment saw an easy opportunity to expand the empire by seizing Cuba and the Philippines, in yet another high-leverage venture. The (by many considered suspicious) explosion on the Battleship Maine provided the excuse for hostilities. In fact, I omitted from the previous section numerous other foreign adventures, including the "opening" of Japan by Admiral Perry, the acquisition of Hawaii, and various other interventions around the world. The omission was intentional to permit a focus on the imperial nature of the core American system. In any case, When World War I came along, the US was an experienced imperial player, hungry for a bigger arena. Entering full-scale into the European conflict would not have been a high-leverage activity--the cost would have been too high. Staying out entirely from the conflict was also not high-leverage--that would be likely to minimize American influence in the aftermath of the war. A high-leverage middle path was followed. Neutrality was maintained until the worst carnage was over, and the U.S. entered the war just in time to join the winning side and claim a role in the postwar negotiations, while avoiding the huge loss of life and wealth suffered by the European powers. 1918-1941: Setting the Stage for Global Dominance ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is one of the most important periods in U.S. history. The conventional historical myth is that the U.S. slept during this period--lost in its isolationism while Europe suffered under civil wars and fascism. In this myth, the U.S. giant is awakened only by a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Then the noble giant, aroused, goes forth to aid the forces of democracy and freedom against the forces of darkness. The truth is something very different. There is one thing about America that is important to understand. This is not unique to America by any means, but it gets overlooked nonetheless. In America there are two realities. You might call them the realities of White House announcements, and the reality of what business is up to. I'll call them PR and the real world. In PR, the U.S. acts to "protect American citizens". In the real world some U.S. corporation is having trouble with some local government. What the two worlds have in common is that the Marines are being sent into Santo Domingo. If we want to understand what America is up to, it is often more useful to look at what kind of business its corporations are carrying on than it is to examine political speeches and diplomatic position papers. During the inter-war period, while America was officially neutral, General Motors had factories in Nazi Germany turning out the Panzer tanks and the Luftwaffe bombers that were later to be unleashed on the plains of France and over the skies of Britain. So was the U.S. neutral or not? Was GM a rogue profiteer, acting against Washington's wishes, or was it a covert instrument of geopolitical manipulation? Perhaps we begin to find an answer when we note that those GM plants (and those of many other U.S. corporations, including some owned by Prescott Bush, Grandfather of current President G.W. Bush) continued to operate under the Nazis throughout the war, and that during the war critical military supplies were sometimes shunted by American corporations to the Nazis, when it was also desperately needed by Allied forces. In America, and again this is not unique, the same elite community that dominates the boards of the big corporations also runs the government agencies, heads the think-tanks, and acts as Presidential advisors. In the real world, the U.S. government acts as a kind of Chamber of Commerce for American big business. Its main job is to make the world safe for American profiteering, and to ensure that sufficient growth opportunities are available to keep the quarterly reports in the black. I suggest that the U.S.--as an international player--is defined largely by what its corporations do. The government acts as a supporting agency. Corporate activities only seldom show up in the news or in the history books, but that is where the action is. When things are going smoothly for business, there is little the government needs to do and so we see news reports about something else. If problems come up, then the Marines are dispatched and we hear a story about a humanitarian peace keeping mission. By the nature of what we understand to be "news", the important business of the world seldom gets reported. From this perspective, the inter-war years look quite different than the historical mythology. What the U.S. actually did during these years, if you follow the money, was to systematically set all the ducks in a row--enabling it to emerge from the coming war as the most powerful nation on Earth. It supported the rise of fascist regimes in Italy and Germany; it helped finance and arm the Nazis; it invested in and traded heavily with Japan; it provided technological assistance to Japan and Germany; its corporations made billions in the process. This is not neutrality. This is collaboration. The aggressive, nationalist governments of Germany and Japan were something that the U.S. helped create and nurtured in their growth. Hitler's agenda was clear. He had published it in Mein Kampf and he remained true to it always. His main mission in life was to subjugate Russia and establish it as a great enslaved hinterland of the Reich. Japan's agenda was also clear, defined by its vision of a Co-Prosperity Sphere. The U.S. collaborated--by its business actions--in helping these aggressors prepare for their campaigns. It watched while they launched their attacks and embroiled their troops in wars with the world's two largest nations, China and Russia. It waited until just the right moment, the moment of maximum leverage, and then it entered the fray as an official player--just in time to pick up the spoils from all the other exhausted players. The "right moment" had been very carefully identified in advance. The Council on Foreign Relations carried out a series of studies from 1939 to 1941 and decided that Southeast Asia was the line that Japan could not be allowed to cross. And when that line was crossed, Roosevelt promptly froze Japanese assets in American banks and thereby cut off Japan's oil supply. Japan considered that an act of war, which was to be expected, and Japan's reaction was anticipated by Roosevelt. He waited patiently for the inevitable attack, which was soon known to be Pearl Harbor. When the intelligence reports came in identifying the time of attack, the strategic carriers were dispatched to sea and antiquated ships were left in harbor as sacrificial lambs. By first pretending neutrality, and later pretending surprise and outrage over Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was able to enter the war as a perceived wronged party, presumably innocent of any imperial designs of its own. Notice the use of leverage at every turn. Instead of marching out to conquer the world, Hitler style, the U.S. set up everyone else to fight one another, making a tidy profit in the process. Instead of declaring war on Japan, and being identified as an imperial player, it provoked Japan into providing a more appealing PR scenario. Instead of entangling itself with formal alliances, America simply invested in those regimes it wanted to foster, and then turned on them when it saw fit. Instead of sending troops in to fight Hitler right away, it waited in its UK bases until the Russians turned the tide on the Nazis. Then it rushed in with its D-Day fanfare and raced to try to get to Berlin before the Russians, being opposed by only a small fraction of the Nazi divisions deployed in the Russian theater. The supposedly slept-through inter-war years prepared the way for a brief four years of high-leverage U.S. military activity between 1942 and 1945. When the dust had settled, the U.S. emerged with control of the seven seas, an intact economy and military, 40% of the world's wealth and industrial capacity, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and had escaped the destruction and economic hardship suffered by all the other participants in the war. It was at its peak while everyone else was on the floor. It had pulled off the greatest coup in world history and no one even noticed. It had achieved overwhelming global hegemony while being perceived as a benevolent liberator. It had power, wealth, and psychology on its side as it set out to shape the postwar world. The lion was preparing to run the world, and he was being welcomed in most parts of the world as a lamb. 1945-1980: Pax Americana and Collective Imperialism ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The U.S. came out of the war with a blueprint for the world, a plan that had been prepared in that same series of CFR studies that had identified the entry point for U.S. intervention. The UN, the World Bank, the IMF, and the whole Bretton Woods setup had all been carefully worked out in advance, before Pearl Harbor. On the PR surface, Bretton Woods appeared to be yet another act of benevolence on the part of liberator Uncle Sam. After saving the world from fascism, the U.S. was now sponsoring a new era of peace and stability. Nations would sit down in the UN and work out their problems instead of settling them by warfare. Currencies were to be stabilized and democracy was to be spread throughout the world as the old colonial empires were gradually disbanded. The reality, however, was quite different. In Holly Sklar's anthology, "Trilateralism", Laurence Shoup and William Minter examine the discussions that went on in the pre-1945 CFR planning sessions: "Recommendation P-B23 (July, 1941) stated that worldwide financial institutions were necessary for the purpose of 'stabilizing currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions.' During the last half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the Council developed this idea for the integration of the world.... Isaiah Bowman first suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a Council meeting in May 1942, he stated that the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure 'security,' and at the same time 'avoid conventional forms of imperialism.' The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body". In fact the Bretton Woods system was a design for a new regime of global imperialism. The old regime was one of competitive, partitioned imperialism. France, Britain, Germany, and the other players each had their own private colonial realm. Economic opportunities for each nation could be measured by the size of its colonial realm, and competition over realms was the cause behind the frequent wars among the European powers. The U.S. vision was to convert competitive imperialism into collaborative imperialism. Instead of partitioned realms, there would be one global market where all players could seek their fortunes. European nations would no longer need to compete militarily for territories, but could instead compete in a business sense for the opportunities opened up by the global market. The U.S. would provide a level economic playing field to its European counterparts, but it preserved certain prerogatives to itself--and it had significant advantages in terms of available investment capital and infrastructure with which to exploit the development opportunities. As regards prerogatives, the U.S. was to be the primary policeman, the supreme arbiter of imperial stability. This prerogative was challenged just once, when Britain and France launched the Suez War--the kind of thing they had been doing for centuries. The U.S. promptly put an end to that and Pax Americana has reigned supreme ever since as the international military order. For centuries people thought that European wars would never end; they had been regular affairs all that time. But once Pax Americana was established, the idea of France, Germany, or Britain fighting one another became ludicrous. Credit is commonly given to the European integration for ensuring this peace, but that's simply pro-Brussels propaganda. By the time the EU came along European peace had already been ensured--the motivation for inter-sibling warfare had long been removed. It seems strange now to realize how peripheral the Cold War was to all this. The Cold War seemed so important at the time, so central to world affairs. Perhaps it was the fear we all had of nuclear catastrophe. But in fact, now that we can see it in perspective, the Cold War was simply a matter of the U.S. excluding the Communist World, in so far as possible, from interfering with or participating in the global imperial regime that the U.S. had established. We were presented with a myth of an expansionist Soviet empire, threatening the Free World. What we actually had was a global American empire, with the Soviets more concerned about their own economic and literal survival than with any kind of expansionism. So, in the end, the Cold War stands only as a side chapter in the story of the twentieth century, a temporary distraction to the main story--the continual growth of American wealth and power. That is why the end of the Cold War did not bring the great relaxation of tensions that we had all hoped for. It turned out to be irrelevant the real business of America, the business of empire. The American scheme for postwar global development performed brilliantly, as measured by the prosperity of Western elites and populations. In the world of Western elites there was one kind of prosperity going on. Corporations launched forth into the global marketplace, experienced rapid growth, and developed into what we now call the transnational corporations (TNCs). There had always been a few TNCs, ever since the Hudson's Bay Company and the British East India Company. And we had the Seven Sister oil companies. But in the postwar era TNCs sprung up in every business sector, and became commercially dominant and all pervasive on a scale never seen before. The commerce of the world was being centralized, under the control of the boards of a few dozen global corporations. From a capitalist perspective, the postwar years might be called the "Era of Global Consolidation". In the world of ordinary people in the West, another kind of prosperity was going on. This was an era characterized by high employment, rising standards of living, improved working conditions, low crime rates, increased social services, a growing middle class, and gains in civil rights and civil liberties. From a social perspective, one might call the postwar period "The Great Era of Liberal Democracy". It is an era that is no more. Our own time can be characterized almost as the opposite of the postwar years--rising unemployment, lowering living standards, worsening working conditions, rising crime rates, decreasing social services, a shrinking middle class, and losses of civil rights and civil liberties. Where did it all go and why? On the surface everything seemed rosy for the West in the postwar era. The problem with the scenario was that it was not sustainable. All that prosperity was being driven by a particular engine--the engine of rapid and profitable global development. The new imperial regime had been established for the purpose of creating an open global marketplace and exploiting the huge development opportunities that then became available. That happened, and the rewards were reaped, in particular by the U.S., Europe, and Japan. But the Earth, large as it is, is finite. Even global markets can eventually be saturated and stop growing at sufficient speed to feed the needs of global capitalism. In the 1970s that is what began to happen. The postwar boom was losing its bang. Economic growth was slowing down. Something was going to have to give way somewhere. It would no longer be possible to afford everything that had been possible during the height of the postwar boom. Things weren't going to collapse overnight, but the handwriting was on the wall. In such circumstances a smart person or group would make preparations to deal with the change--if in a position to do so. Elite Planning and Global Management ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Recall that the whole postwar global scenario was orchestrated with some considerable precision way back before Pearl Harbor by a study group of the Council on Foreign Relations. Their blueprint was implemented, and it led to the kind of results it had aimed for. The U.S. government showed itself to be capable of shepherding the project along and keeping it close enough to a true course, through the effective use of money, diplomacy, and force of arms--both overt and covert. And the U.S. government, along with the elite-run media, was able to maintain adequate public support through the twists and turns of the project--creating cover stories and spin at every juncture to hide the real meaning behind what was going on, hiding behind the smokescreen of the Cold War. To put it another way: Throughout the postwar era the world was being intentionally guided and managed according to an explicit plan that was hatched by a group of professional analysts who were reporting to top elements of the American elite establishment. In it's high-leverage, indirect, behind-the-scenes style, the U.S. and its elite had been in effect running the world their way ever since 1945--even though most people did not fully realize that was going on. Although the original Bretton Woods blueprint was remarkably comprehensive and showed considerable foresight, the day-to-day business of managing the global imperial system American style required ongoing monitoring, the identification of dangers and opportunities, and the application of selective and high-leverage interventions to deal with those. In the postwar years a huge intelligence & analysis apparatus arose around the Washington beltway to carry out such required tasks of empire. The CIA and related intelligence agencies, countless think tanks, consulting firms, law firms, and the Council on Foreign Relations all play a role in this elite-run apparatus. When things were booming in the postwar era, the job of this apparatus was to keep things booming, and to alert the political apparatus whenever intervention was going to be needed. And when things began to stop booming, the attention of this apparatus sensibly turned to re-considering the founding blueprint. Smart people prepare for predictable change, and that is exactly what happened. One particular document stands out as a pivotal and candid expression of the kind of thinking that was going on in U.S. elite circles as the postwar boom began running out of steam. In 1975 Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington, of the Council on Foreign Relations, published his now-infamous essay, The Crisis of Democracy. Consider this passage, and again I am borrowing from "Trilateralism": "To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector's 'Establishment'". Huntington's view of how the U.S. is governed, evidently, was in complete alignment with the perspective I have been presenting in this chapter. He makes no mention of the electorate or the political process as providing input to the policy-making process. Instead he identifies a constituency that is more or less the same as what I have been calling the "elite" and the "intelligence & analysis apparatus". Perhaps we can take Huntington's words as an insider corroboration of that aspect of this analysis. Elsewhere in his essay, Huntington tells us that democratic societies "cannot work" unless the citizenry is "passive". The "democratic surge of the 1960s" represented an "excess of democracy," which must be reduced if governments are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign policies. He is claiming that whether American society "works" is defined by whether or not the government can carry out its "traditional domestic and foreign policies". If the elite establishment can continue to run the empire according to its agenda, then the society can "work," otherwise it can't. In order to keep society "working," which is presumably an obvious imperative, Huntington is suggesting that the level of democracy needs to be reduced--presumably by means of appropriate actions to be undertaken by the elite establishment. The Civil Rights Movement, the Anti War Movement, and the Environmental Movement are all clearly being referred to by Huntington's "excess of democracy". The management of empire is made more difficult when movements rise up that interfere with economic or political arrangements, or that interfere with imperial interventions. In the next section I will try to show that he implied a great many more "reductions" than simply the neutralization of dissenting movements. Taken by itself, it is difficult to tell how widely shared Huntington's views were in elite circles in 1975. He may have been summarizing an emerging elite consensus, or he may have been championing new ideas that were later to find wider acceptance. But we do need to keep in mind that Huntington was and is a prestigious member of the elite community, a highly respected Professor of History at Harvard, and one whose ideas are taken very seriously by many influential people. We can at least infer from his words that elites were discussing the crisis of declining global growth, and that they were willing to entertain a radical re-examination of the basic foundations of the 1945 blueprint in order to respond to that crisis. An explicit curtailment of liberal democratic institutions, for example, was not beyond consideration by serious people in the elite community. Capitalism and its Growth Imperative ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In order to understand the dynamics of the global imperial system, and how it responds to crises, it is necessary to understand very clearly the relationship between capitalism and economic growth. The fundamental driver in a capitalist society is the investor. A capitalist, to put it simply, is someone who has capital to invest in the expectation of having his investment back plus a healthy return. Whether this accomplished through currency manipulations, land speculation, or investment in a growing enterprise is a matter of implementation. The basic thing is return on investment. Investments naturally gravitate toward those opportunities that promise the greatest returns / risk ratio. If no growth opportunities can be found, then investors withdraw their funds, stock markets collapse, and we experience either a Depression or Recession. Capitalism does not simply favor growth, it needs continual growth, always more than the year before--like a dope addict needs his drug--or it simply cannot operate. The role of a corporation under capitalism is that of a vehicle--an investment vehicle designed and chartered to grow larger on behalf of its investors, as represented by the Board of Directors. And if it fails to grow larger it will be avoided by investors, and will have difficulty surviving at all. Thus corporations pursue growth not so much because of greed on the part of the CEO, but because growth is the stated purpose of the corporation and the self-interest of the CEO and the Board of Directors is served by making that happen. The role of the elite planning and analysis apparatus under capitalism is to ensure that adequate growth opportunities will be available when needed for continued global corporate growth, as well as for capital growth of other kinds, such as can be found in the international financial markets. That is why declining growth in the 1970s was seen as a looming crisis, and why radical measures were being entertained in the elite planning community. This was not a matter of greed; it was a matter of necessity. 1980-2001--The Era of Corporatization ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Let us consider for a moment the problem of declining economic growth in the 1970s--from the perspective of elite planners. What options were available to them to deal with that problem? Certainly they would not consider abandoning capitalism--and under capitalism economic growth is not simply desirable, it is an absolute necessity. The planners needed to find new growth room for capitalism no matter what the cost might be in non-monetary terms. From the birth of the U.S. until the 1970s the problem of economic growth had always been solved by expansion of its economic operations The whole economic pie kept getting bigger by this means, and from that pie the nation was able to run its affairs, the people were able to take their livelihoods, and the elite were able to extract their capital gains. But this time that solution was no longer available. Expansion had reached the ultimate global scale and was finally beginning to exhaust itself. If the overall pie could not grow adequately any more, the only solution for the elite was to increase the share of the pie that they claimed for their own profit taking. The continuation of capitalism required that the nation must run its affairs with less, and that the people must survive on less--so that the elite could continue to have more. That is what was required for the American system to continue "working," for capitalism to survive. The postwar blueprint had been based on a growing pie, and a new blueprint was now needed. Redistribution of the economic pie was the only available solution, and the implementation of that solution is precisely what was launched with the political campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (1980) and carried forward in their subsequent administrations. As we review their policies, we can read the new blueprint. Corporate tax cuts were one of the central policies. That represented a direct transfer of wealth from governments to corporations--an obvious redistribution of the pie favoring elite investors at the expense of social programs and other governmental operations. Privatization was another central policy. Infrastructures and programs which had been run on a non-profit basis for the public good were thereby turned into profit-making ventures under the control of private operators. This increased the elite share of the pie still further. The cost of privatization was of two kinds. In monetary terms, the population had to pay for the profits taken by the investors. In terms of democratic institutions, the cost paid was a loss of control. Programs and infrastructure that had been under the control of the political process were now under the direct control of elite investors and their hired managers. This is part of what was implied by Huntington's "reduction" of "excess democracy". Deregulation was the third major policy, and again this represented a disenfranchisement of democratic institutions--for the benefit of elite profit taking. To the extent regulations were removed, corporations were free to increase their growth in ways that were contrary to the public good and destabilizing to the national economy. The consequences of these policies included loss of government control over cross-border currency transactions, elite looting of formerly protected industries (e.g., UK pension funds, U.S. Savings & Loan Industry), curtailment of social benefits, a general and continuing decline in living standards and quality of life, and the impoverishment of governments due to under-funded budgets. The core of the new blueprint was clearly a transfer of both wealth and power from nations and their populations to corporations. By this means economic growth was able to continue under the capitalist system. The next stage of the new elite program was to export these corporatist policies from the U.S. and Britain to the rest of the world--a process that came to be known as "globalization". In order to accomplish this, it was necessary for American and British elites to persuade European elites to go along with the program. This was not difficult as European elites were facing the same problem of declining growth. The U.S. and Britain had found a formula that "worked" and that was a strong selling point. Thus when the Maastricht Treaty was drafted, by financial ministers rather than political ministers, its core provisions focused on what was called a "conservative fiscal policy". Thereby corporatism got its foot into the back door of Europe, avoiding the political difficulty of entering by the front door as had been accomplished via Reagan and Thatcher. With Western elites generally on board, globalization began to move into high gear. The GATT treaty process was employed to force through agreements that were aimed at transferring wealth and power to corporations globally, at the expense of governments and populations. The IMF introduced "structural adjustment programs" which forced third-world governments to adopt policies favorable to global capitalism in order to obtain needed financing. In the third world, the economic suffering and political destabilization caused by globalization far exceeded that experienced by Western populations. The WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the related corporatist institutions were becoming a de facto world government. These institutions have immense power to regulate not only international trade, but also to dictate internal policies to national governments. Environmental protection laws and safety regulations by nations are routinely overruled by the WTO, on the pretext that they are "protectionist". These all-powerful acronymical bureaucratic agencies are dominated by delegates from elite circles, primarily from the US. There is no pretense of any kind of democratic representation. As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, the world had become a quite different place than it had been during the postwar era. Instead of governments regulating corporations, corporations now regulated governments through the authority vested in the World Trade Organization and IMF by so-called "free trade" treaties. Instead of prosperous nations and improving living conditions in the West, governments were struggling to manage their budgets and living conditions were continually deteriorating. The overall pattern of the new elite blueprint was now becoming clear: the world was being corporatized. The transnational corporation was becoming the primary unit of power in global society, rather than the nation state. Political power had become subservient to corporate power. Capitalism had triumphed over democracy. The Enlightenment vision of sovereign and democratic republics had been covertly replaced by corporatism--Mussolini's preferred name for fascism. The strategic use of betrayal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ America's rise to power can be characterized as a sequence of alliances and betrayals orchestrated by the elite Establishment. First came the betrayal of the Revolution. After the early colonial elites adopted the rhetoric of radical democracy and led the masses into a bloody Revolution under that banner, they then betrayed their revolutionary allies and set up a centralized government that would enable continued elite control. Next came the Native Americans, who were tricked and betrayed at every turn. The right to change of government--proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence--was betrayed when the South, an ally in the formation of the republic, was denied the right of self-determination. When the Bretton Woods system was set up after World War II, the U.S. offered a kind of alliance to the nations of the world, promising to cooperate in the development of a peaceful and democratic new world. This alliance too was betrayed, insofar as the third word was concerned, as the U.S. proceeded to manage its global empire to provide growth room for corporations, and used its Pax Americana prerogatives on countless occasions to intervene in the affairs of other nations--usually imposing client dictator governments subservient to international corporate interests. While the third world was betrayed by the postwar imperial system, an alliance of a more real kind was in effect among the US, the leading industrialized nations, and the elites and people of those nations. This alliance was based on mutual prosperity and self-interest. The growth opportunities offered by postwar reconstruction and development--in a relatively open global market--were immense. There were opportunities enough to support the economies in all the industrialized nations, and profits sufficient that they could be shared with the national governments via taxation and with workers via rising pay standards. Contented workers are productive workers and the arrangement worked to everyone's advantage in the industrialized world--until the early 1970s. When growth in the global economy began to slow down, an elite decision was made to betray two of the parties of the existing alliance. The elites of the industrialized nations would continue to benefit under globalization, but national sovereignty--along with national and popular prosperity--were to be sacrificed to enable continued growth in the capitalist economy. 2001-?--The New American Century: the Empire comes out in the open ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In the late 1990s the globalization blueprint began to falter, as had each previous blueprint in its turn. The problem this time was excess global production. More cars, for example, were being produced each year than could be sold on the global market. Car manufacturers were forced to cut back production and there was a downward pressure on prices. This was happening in many sectors and the trend was hurting overall growth in the global economy. Once again an adjustment was required, and once again betrayal would provide the easiest high-leverage solution. The solution to the problem of over production, from the perspective of U.S. elites, was simply to eliminate some of the producers--to destroy the economies of some of the industrialized nations. In this way growth room could be made available to the remaining players. A convenient means of such destruction was provided by the international financial markets. Trillions of dollars worth of trades are made daily on the international markets--dwarfing most national economies. Using these markets, it is not difficult to engineer a raid on the currency of any given nation. If a few big traders coordinate their activities, they can gradually buy into the currency, and then dump their holdings all at once. Other traders jump on the bandwagon and the currency plummets. The target nation then must default on its international debts, enabling the IMF to come in for the final kill. Such a program of destruction can be easily carried out by the East Coast elite Establishment, connected as it is to Wall Street, the big international banks, and to large institutional investors. And beginning in 1997 such a program was carried out, with targets including Thailand, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, and the Asian Tigers. First the currencies were raided, and then the IMF supervised the selling off of local assets at bargain prices to the remaining industrial players. Those remaining players were thereby provided more room for economic growth. There is a currently-popular TV quiz show called Weakest Link. The game begins with a group of players, and after each round of questions the players vote on a "weakest link" who is eliminated from the game. The last remaining player goes home with the biggest prize. As globalization began to falter, the U.S. Establishment began playing a game of Weakest Link, with itself having all the votes. As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, the main players left in the game were the US, Western Europe, China, Japan, and Russia. This is not a game that can stop. Each time a player is eliminated, the growth provided eventually runs out. In the game of Weakest Link, only one player remains at the end. As the growing global economy continually collides with the limits of a finite Earth, and finite markets, the U.S. Establishment must increasingly monopolize global markets and resources unto itself. And it has the means to do so. The same Establishment that dominates U.S. commerce also controls the White House and the Pentagon. The New American Century began on September 11, 2001. At the top of the TV screen was the slogan, "War on America", and within hours the blame had been laid on a sinister looking villain, a villain whose only motivation was a pathological desire to destroy democracy and freedom. Here was villain right out of 1984 or Batman. And it wasn't long before we heard about a War on Terrorism that would last indefinitely, and already they knew it would cost exactly $30 billion. From the very early days, the episode had all the earmarks of a neo-Reichstag Fire, an inside job, a new Pearl Harbor. As evidence has become available regarding the events leading up to the attack, that evidence has all been in conflict with the official story line, and none has been corroborative. As the official story has twisted and turned, in response to the incriminating evidence, that has only detracted further from the story's credibility. The administration keeps repeating its claims as truths, offering no evidence, as one would expect in the case of a Big Lie. From the perspective of an objective detective trying to solve a case--where everyone in the room is a suspect--an inside job Reichstag Fire is by far the most likely explanation for what happened that fateful day. On the other hand, if the far-fetched Bin Laden conspiracy theory is true, then we must give the American elite credit for an incredibly fast-footed response. In that case they managed to capitalize on an unexpected fire with all the same precision and speed one would have expected following a pre-planned job. We now know that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and crew came into the White House with a detailed agenda up their sleeve, and it was an agenda that would have been very difficult to pursue without the dramatic events of 9-11. Indeed, such an agenda would have been incomplete if it did not include a plan for achieving domestic public acceptance and international acquiescence. And after 9-11, the pre-existing agenda was immediately launched into implementation. In terms of evaluating suspected perpetrators for 9-11, one must clearly attribute to top U.S. elites motive, opportunity, means, modus operandi, and lack of alibi. In addition there has been no evidence presented that is contrary to their culpability. That's a perfect description of a prime suspect. The agenda of the new White House was written up as a report, Rebuilding America's Defenses-- Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, produced in September 2000 by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Some of the founding members of PNAC include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. These are the folks who are running U.S. foreign policy. Here are some excerpts from their written agenda for the New American Century: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein". (p. 14) "Further, these constabulary missions are far more complex and likely to generate violence than traditional 'peacekeeping' missions. For one, they demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations, as the failure of the UN mission in the Balkans and the relative success of NATO operations there attests" (p. 11). "Since today's peace is the unique product of American preeminence, a failure to preserve that preeminence allows others an opportunity to shape the world in ways antithetical to American interests and principles. The price of American preeminence is that, just as it was actively obtained, it must be actively maintained" (p. 73). "To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs" (p. 50). "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing even--like a new Pearl Harbor" (p. 51). Soon after the PNAC crew managed to get control of the White House, they got their "new Pearl Harbor", they got their "substantial American force presence in the Gulf" under "American political leadership", and the revolution in military affairs is now moving "more aggressively". The "War on Terrorism", enabled by 9-11's new Pearl Harbor, is the smokescreen behind which the agenda of the New American Century is being aggressively implemented. American "preeminence", apparently, is to be ensured into the future. No challenge to U.S. military or economic supremacy is to be tolerated. In response to yet another capitalist growth crisis, the American elite establishment has adopted yet another blueprint defining yet another paradigm of world order. In the postwar blueprint, the U.S. invited the other great powers and their populations to join in the collective imperialization of the third world. In the corporatist blueprint, the U.S. elite invited the elites of the other great powers to join them in betraying their nations and populations--to enable continued corporate growth. In the New American Century blueprint, the last surviving collaborators are being betrayed as well. The American elite have circled their wagons and little more than the Pentagon and the Homeland Security apparatus remain inside their circle. Homeland Security is needed to keep the domestic population under control, while the Pentagon keeps everyone else under control. -- ============================================================ "...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." - Srdja Trifkovic There is not a problem with the system. The system is the problem. Faith in humanity, not gods, ideologies, or programs. _____________________________ cyberjournal home page: http://cyberjournal.org "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog 'Truthout' excellent news source: http://www.truthout.org subscribe addresses for cj list: •••@••.••• •••@••.••• ============================================================